CrystalDiskMark

RAID 1

RAID 0

RAID 0 2.5 Gbps dongle

CrystalDiskMark is a commonly used drive benchmark, and it gives us a quick and easy baseline for the drive performance. We run the benchmark using all available RAID modes, but we also threw in a USB to Ethernet dongle with support for 2.5 Gbps Ethernet to see if there was some hidden performance to be had. Using Gigabit Ethernet really shows how far NAS devices have come in terms of throughput, and even 2.5 Gbps Ethernet is a major upgrade for sequential file copying. However, once we look at the random performance, the NASync DH2300 doesn't really deliver any extra performance here, although it's possible that going via USB might be hampering the performance somewhat. Even this quick and dirty test shows that Ugreen really should've gone for that 2.5 Gbps Ethernet interface on the NASync DH2300, as the Rockchip SoC clearly has enough performance left for the extra network throughput.

iPerf3

To make sure that the networking interface is working as intended, we run a quick test with iPerf3. These are the lowest iPerf3 scores we've seen to date since we started reviewing NAS devices again, but it's also the kind of throughput you'd expect from a 1 Gbps interface.

NAS Performance Tester

Our next test is simply called the NAS performance tester, and this is where we get in to some actual drive benchmarks. We configured the NAS performance tester to use an 8 GB dataset which is deleted and re-created during each iteration of the test. The test runs five iterations for the read and write operations. The reason the test data is deleted between each test run is to prevent any kind of caching from taking place. With the native 1 Gbps port, we pretty much hit peak throughput, but as you can see when using that 2.5 Gbps USB to Ethernet dongle, there's a lot of performance left in the NASync DH2300, and it delivered the best performance of any NAS we've tested with a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet interface when it comes to copying files to the NAS from the host system. This shows that Ugreen really made a mistake not adding a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port to the NASync DH2300.

Helios LanTest

Helios RAID 1, 1 Gbps


Helios RAID 0, 1 Gbps


Helios RAID 0, 2.5 Gbps

The fourth and final synthetic benchmark test is a tool called Helios LanTest which runs seven different tests to measure both response time, but also raw throughput of a NAS. We ran the test fives times which produces an average of those five runs to eliminate potential outliers. The read and write test varies a lot less here and there's less variation between the different test scenarios as well, even though the throughput figures are lower than in the NAS Performance Tester and CrystalDiskMark. Once again we can see the throughput benefits that the 2.5 Gbps USB to Ethernet dongle brings when it comes to copying files, although the other operations don't differ significantly between using 1 Gbps or 2.5 Gbps Ethernet.